Cognition psychologists at the Ruhr-Universität together with colleagues from the University Hospital Bergmannsheil (Prof. Dr. Martin Tegenthoff) have discovered why stressed persons are more likely to lapse back into habits than to behave goal-directed. The team of PD Dr. Lars Schwabe and Prof. Dr. Oliver Wolf from the Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience have mimicked a stress situation in the body using drugs. They then examined the brain activity using functional MRI scanning. The researchers have now reported in the Journal of Neuroscience that the interaction of the ...

Having a stroke or mini stroke has a much more profound effect on women than men when it comes to their quality of life, according to research published in the August issue of the Journal of Clinical Nursing. Swedish researchers at Danderyd Hospital, Stockholm, asked all patients attending an out-patient clinic over a 16-month period to complete the Nottingham Health Profile, a generic quality of life survey used to measure subjective physical, emotional and social aspects of health. A total of 496 patients agreed to take part – 379 were stroke patients and 117 had ...

Many of the world's tropical protected areas are struggling to sustain their biodiversity, according to a study by more than 200 scientists from around the world. But the study published in Nature includes research focusing on a reserve in Tanzania by University of York scientists that indicates that long-term engagement with conservation has positive results Dr Andy Marshall, of the Environment Department at York and Director of Conservation Science at Flamingo Land, compared the data he collected in the Udzungwa mountains with data collected more than 20 years previously ...

Cambridge scientists have used an age-old fable to help illustrate how we think differently to other animals. Lucy Cheke, a PhD student at the University of Cambridge's Department of Experimental Psychology expanded Aesop's fable into three tasks of varying complexity and compared the performance of Eurasian Jays with local school children. The task that set the children apart from the Jays involved a mechanism which was counter-intuitive as it was hidden under an opaque surface. Neither the birds nor the children were able to learn how the mechanism worked, but the ...

To win a second term in office, President Obama needs to persuade voters that he is still one of them – and recapture some of the charisma that help propel him to the top four years ago. However, this is clearly a challenge given the economic difficulties facing many Americans. Writing in Scientific American Mind, Professors Alex Haslam of the University of Exeter and Stephen Reicher of St Andrews describe how presenting themselves as 'one of us' is central to leaders being seen as a charismatic. Rather than being an inherent personal quality, they identify charisma ...

This press release is available in Spanish. VIDEO: Researchers at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid have recently published a report which analyzes the impact of the economic crisis on gambling and the social perception of games of... Click here for more information. Scientists from the Institute of Policy and Governance (whose initials in Spanish are IPOLGOB) at the UC3M have ...

This press release is available in German. Embarrassing personal photos and videos circulating in the Internet: researchers at Bielefeld University have discovered that young people who fall victim to cyberbullying or cyber harassment suffer most when fellow pupils make them objects of ridicule by distributing photographic material. According to an online survey published on Thursday 19 July, about half of the victims feel very stressed or severely stressed by this type of behaviour. 1,881 schoolchildren living in Germany took part in the survey conducted by the ...

Researchers from IMIM (Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute) have deciphered the function executed by a protein called β-catenin in generating blood tissue stem cells. These cells, also called haematopoietic, are used as a source for transplants that form part of the therapies to fight different types of leukaemia. The results obtained will open the doors to produce these stem cells in the laboratory and, thus, improve the quality and quantity of these surgical procedures. This will let patients with no compatible donors be able to benefit from this discovery ...

Washington, D.C.— Comets and asteroids preserve the building blocks of our Solar System and should help explain its origin. But there are unsolved puzzles. For example, how did icy comets obtain particles that formed at high temperatures, and how did these refractory particles acquire rims with different compositions? Carnegie's theoretical astrophysicist Alan Boss and cosmochemist Conel Alexander* are the first to model the trajectories of such particles in the unstable disk of gas and dust that formed the Solar System. They found that these refractory particles could ...

Washington, D.C.—Using new, highly efficient techniques, Carnegie and Colombian scientists have developed accurate high-resolution maps of the carbon stocks locked in tropical vegetation for 40% of the Colombian Amazon (165,000 square kilometers/64,000 square miles), an area about four times the size of Switzerland. Until now, the inability to accurately quantify carbon stocks at high spatial resolution over large areas has hindered the United Nations' Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) program, which is aimed at creating financial value ...

Local weather patterns temporarily influence people's beliefs about evidence for global warming, according to research by political scientists at New York University and Temple University. Their study, which appears in the Journal of Politics, found that those living in places experiencing warmer-than-normal temperatures at the time they were surveyed were significantly more likely than others to say there is evidence for global warming. "Global climate change is one of the most important public policy challenges of our time, but it is a complex issue with which Americans ...

Researchers from the University of Southampton have devised a novel method for forming virtual power plants to provide renewable energy production in the UK. In the last decade, small and distributed energy resources (DERs), like wind farms and solar panels, have begun to appear in greater numbers in the electricity supply network (Grid). To ensure that energy demand is met without interruptions, the Grid requires power suppliers to provide an estimate of their production and the confidence in meeting that estimate. Depending on the confidence placed on the estimates, ...

TORONTO, July 25, 2012 – A new study by York University researchers finds that songbirds follow a strict annual schedule when migrating to their breeding grounds – with some birds departing on precisely the same date each year. The study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, is the first to track the migration routes and timing of individual songbirds over multiple years. Researchers outfitted wood thrushes with tiny geolocator "backpacks," recording data on their movements. Spring departure dates of birds heading from the tropics to North American breeding grounds were ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Young people who watch more sexual content from movies also tend to engage in more sexual behavior and begin sexual activity at an earlier age, according to a University of Missouri researcher's study. "We can't say that watching sexual content in movies is directly responsible for adolescents' sexual behavior," said Ross O'Hara, currently a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Missouri, who conducted the research with other psychological scientists while at Dartmouth College. "However, there is a correlation between the two. Sensation seeking, or ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- In the days following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, methane-eating bacteria bloomed in the Gulf of Mexico, feasting on the methane that gushed, along with oil, from the damaged well. The sudden influx of microbes was a scientific curiosity: Prior to the oil spill, scientists had observed relatively few signs of methane-eating microbes in the area. Now researchers at MIT have discovered a bacterial gene that may explain this sudden influx of methane-eating bacteria. This gene enables bacteria to survive in extreme, oxygen-depleted environments, ...

VIDEO: Are all bosses arrogant? Click here for more information. Akron, Ohio, July 25, 2012 – Arrogant bosses can drain the bottom line because they are typically poor performers who cover up their insecurities by disparaging subordinates, leading to organizational dysfunction and employee turnover. A new measure of arrogance, developed by researchers at The University of Akron and Michigan State University, can help organizations identify arrogant managers before they have ...

PHILADELPHIA — Establishing protection over a swath of land seems like a good way to conserve its species and its ecosystems. But in a new study, University of Pennsylvania biologist Daniel Janzen joins more than 200 colleagues to report that protected areas are still vulnerable to damaging encroachment, and many are suffering from biodiversity loss. "If you put a boundary around a piece of land and install some bored park guards and that's all you do, the park will eventually die," said Janzen, DiMaura Professor of Conservation Biology in Penn's Department of Biology. ...

A University of Sheffield academic is helping a team of citizen scientists to carry out crucial research into European genetic heritage. Citizen Scientists are not required to have a scientific background or training, but instead they possess a passion for the subject and are increasingly being empowered by the scientific community to get involved in research. Dr Andy Grierson, from the University of Sheffield's Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN), has helped a team of citizen scientists from Europe and North America to identify vital new clues to tell ...

Follow-up exams for patients with celiac disease are often inadequate and highly variable, according to a new study in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, the official clinical practice journal of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA). "In the group of celiac disease patients that we observed, we found that very few of them had medical follow-up that would be in keeping with even the most lax interpretation of current guidelines," said Joseph A. Murray, MD, AGAF, of Mayo Clinic and lead author of this study. "Doctors and patients need to be aware of ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — The key to successful global business expansion is spreading operations across multiple countries, rather than trying to dominate a region or market, according to a new study led by Michigan State University researchers. In addition, since global expansion is costly for service industries, manufacturing industries will profit most, said Tomas Hult, director of MSU's International Business Center. Led by Hult and Ahmet Kirca, associate professor of marketing, the study is the largest ever conducted to examine the effect of multinationality on firm ...

Spatial skills--those involved with reading maps and assembling furniture--can be improved if you work at it, that's according to a new look at the studies on this topic by researchers at Northwestern University and Temple. The research published this month in Psychological Bulletin, the journal of the American Psychological Association, is the first comprehensive analysis of credible studies on such interventions. Improving spatial skills is important because children who do well at spatial tasks such as putting together puzzles are likely to achieve highly in science, ...

This press release is available in German. Leipzig. Fungi are found throughout the soil with giant braiding of fine threads. However, these networks have surprising functions. Only a few years ago researchers from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) discovered that bacteria travel over the fungal threads through the labyrinth of soil pores, much the same as on a highway. Now, together with British colleagues from the University of Lancaster, the UFZ researchers have come upon another phenomenon. Accordingly, the fungal networks also transports contaminants ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Although erectile dysfunction (ED) has been shown to be an early warning sign for heart disease, some physicians – and patients – still think of it as just as a natural part of "old age." But now an international team of researchers, led by physicians at The Miriam Hospital, say it's time to expand ED symptom screening to include younger and middle-aged men. In an article appearing in the July issue of the American Heart Journal, they encourage physicians to inquire about ED symptoms in men over the age of 30 who have cardiovascular risk factors, such ...

Complex, multi-system diseases like myotonic dystrophy – the most common adult form of muscular dystrophy – require physicians and patients to identify which symptoms impact quality of life and, consequently, what treatments should take priority. However, a new study out this month in the journal Neurology reveals that there is often a disconnect between the two groups over which symptoms are more important, a phenomenon that not only impacts care but also the direction of research into new therapies. "In order to design better therapies we must first develop a clear ...

New Rochelle, NY, July 25, 2012—A novel approach to gene therapy that instructs a person's own cells to produce more of a natural disease-fighting protein could offer a solution to treating many genetic disorders. The method was used to achieve a 2- to 3-fold increase in production of a protein deficient in patients with Friedreich's ataxia, as described in an article published Instant Online in Human Gene Therapy, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. (http://www.liebertpub.com) The article is available free online at the Human Gene Therapy website (http://www.liebertpub.com/hum). The ...